The Soudanese Began To Drop On All Sides, 'just Like The
Dervishes At Omdurman,' And The Ground Was Soon Dotted With The Bodies
Of The Killed And Wounded.
'We did not,' said an officer, 'dare to
look back.' But undaunted by fire and cross-fire,
The heroic
black soldiers - demons who would not be denied - pressed forward without
the slightest check or hesitation, and, increasing their pace to a
swift run in their eagerness to close with the enemy, reached the first
sandhills and found cover beneath them. A quarter of the battalion
had already fallen, and lay strewn on the shingle.
The rapidity of their advance had exhausted the Soudanese, and Lewis
ordered Nason to halt under cover of the sandhills for a few minutes,
so that the soldiers might get their breath before the final effort.
Thereupon the Dervishes, seeing that the troops were no longer advancing,
and believing that the attack was repulsed, resolved to clinch the matter.
Ahmed Fedil from the west bank sounded the charge on drum and bugle,
and with loud shouts of triumph and enthusiasm the whole force on the
island rose from among the upper sandhills, and, waving their banners,
advanced impetuously in counter-attack. But the Xth Soudanese,
panting yet unconquerable, responded to the call of their two white
officers, and, crowning the little dunes behind which they had sheltered,
met the exultant enemy with a withering fire and a responding shout.
The range was short and the fire effective. The astonished Arabs
wavered and broke; and then the soldiers, nobly led, swept forward
in a long scattered line and drove the enemy from one sandy ridge
to another - drove them across the rolling and uneven ground, every fold
of which contained Dervishes - drove them steadily back over the sandhills,
until all who were not killed or wounded were penned at the extreme
southern end of the island, with the deep unfordable arm of the river
behind them and the fierce black soldiers, roused to fury by their losses,
in front.
The Sheikh Bakr, with his men and the rest of the irregulars,
joined the victorious Soudanese, and from the cover of the sandhills,
now in the hands of the troops, a terrible fire was opened upon the
Dervishes crowded together on the bare and narrow promontory and on
the foreshore. Some tried to swim across the rushing river to their friends
on the west bank. Many were drowned - among them Saadalla, who sank horse
and man beneath the flood. Others took refuge from the fire by standing
up to their necks in the stream. The greater part, however, escaped to a
smaller island a little further up the river. But the cover was bad,
the deep water prevented further flight, and, after being exposed
for an hour and a half to the musketry of two companies,
the survivors - 300 strong - surrendered.
By 11.30 the whole island was in the possession of the troops.
It was, however, still swept and commanded by the fire from the west bank.
The company which had been detached to subdue the Dervish riflemen
were themselves pinned behind their scanty cover.
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